Ameriprise CEO takes home $46 million

More than Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs … Jennifer Bjorhus of the Strib continues the paper’s focus on CEO pay with a piece on Ameriprise’s boss: “Ever since Ameriprise Financial Inc. spun out of American Express in 2005, Jim Cracchiolo has been one of Minnesota’s highest-paid CEOs. But last year’s megapaycheck swept Cracchiolo not just to the top of the Star Trib­une’s annual executive compensation report for the first time, but also into the echelons of the nation’s highest-paid financial industry CEOs. The $46 million Cracchiolo took home in compensation, largely powered by $35 million he made taking advantage of a pile of stock options, vaulted him far beyond peers like Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Kenneth Chenault, CEO of American Express Co. According to a Forbes survey, Blankfein took home $21 million and Chenault $31.8 million.”

It won’t be a judge stopping the unionization of day-care providers.Brian Bakst of the AP writes: “In a pair of rulings issued Sunday, Judge Michael Davis essentially agreed with state Solicitor General Alan Gilbert that the pair of lawsuits seeking to halt the unionization effort were filed prematurely. Davis dismissed both cases and refused to impose a preliminary injunction on a new law allowing the drive. … There was some urgency to Sunday's rulings. After Wednesday, the union pushing to organize the in-home day care operators can start the petition drive that might ultimately lead to an election.”

Big gummint restricting your right to be fleeced in the gold coin market! Dan Browning of the Strib writes: “A state law takes effect Aug. 1 that will provide consumer protections for precious metals buyers and, effective next July, give the Minnesota Department of Commerce oversight over dealers and their employees. The new bullion coin law will require criminal background checks and will ban from the industry anyone convicted of a financial crime in the preceding 10 years. Dealers also must post a surety bond that can be tapped by consumers in the event of misbehavior. Those who violate the law could be charged with a misdemeanor and pay a fine of $10,000 per incident.” So in other words, gold coins are more dangerous than guns …?

“Less than ... are killed by cars.”Sam Cook of the Duluth News Tribune writes: “The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa will offer an off-reservation moose hunt to its members this fall, taking up to 25 bull moose, band leaders say. But the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has formally objected to the Fond du Lac hunt and has asked the band to reconsider its position, said Steve Merchant, DNR wildlife program manager in St. Paul. Ferdinand Martineau, secretary-treasurer of the Fond du Lac Band, said the band considered several factors before reaching a decision to hold a moose hunt. ‘We had a biologist saying we would probably take less than what are killed by cars and trucks and trains,’ Martineau said.”

With her House colleagues continuing their investigation of her style of business, Our Favorite Congresswoman ripped the president … again, on FoxNews … of course. Paige Lavender’s story at The Huffington Post says: “Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) slammed President Barack Obama for calling a string of recent scandals ‘phony in a speech [last] week. ‘It is dismissive. It is insulting. It is minimizing. It's not validating the concerns that people have,’ Bachmann said in an interview with Fox News. … Bachmann said the remark showed the Obama administration's ‘complete inability to take personal responsibility for their actions and their policy decisions.’ ” Is there something really inappropriate about “dismissive,, “insulting” and “minimizing” in this context?

Amid news that electronic ankle monitors frequently go unchecked by authorities, Amy Forliti of the AP reports: “Electronic monitoring has increased substantially in Minnesota in recent years. According to data from the Department of Corrections, in fiscal year 2005, there were 4,495 days in which offenders were on GPS monitoring. By fiscal year 2012, that number more than tripled to 15,298 days. The number of days in which offenders were on radio frequency monitoring has also increased, although not as dramatically. The monitoring of those on supervised release is tracked by an outside company, RS Eden. In the month of April, RS Eden reported it received 22,804 alerts and that many, if not most, were quickly resolved.”

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman went to the movies Sunday. Nick Ferraro of the PiPress reports: “Coleman participated in a panel discussion along with Sir Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, who is promoting the documentary ‘Breaking the Taboo,’ which chronicles the supposed worldwide failures of the war on drugs. Since it debuted in December, discussions about the film, which Branson's son, Sam, co-produced, have centered on the debate about whether drugs should be treated as a health problem rather than a criminal problem. … Many audience members cheered as Coleman noted how the war on drugs has hit the African-American community especially hard. ‘Again, I'm not here to advocate for deregulation of all drugs or anything. I'm just saying that this isn't working, and we're seeing the consequences of that,’ Coleman said.” So what’s the answer if prohibition isn’t working?

City Pages Editor Kevin Hoffmanexplains his decision to make a story out of Laura Brod’s “boudoir” photo: “[S]everal competing media outlets poo-pooed the story. Myopically focusing on the content of the photograph rather than the context in which it was taken and distributed, they chided that it was no different than the bikinis you might see at the beach. In the hope of further explaining the significance of the story and why we saw fit to investigate and publish it, we are dissecting several unanswered questions that were left unaddressed by Laura Brod's statement to City Pages. … her statement includes what seems to be a tacit admission that the photo was taken by a paramour with whom she was having an affair. Otherwise, there would be no reason for her to discuss the state of her marriage and publicly volunteer the info that she is in the process of divorce … Although we have no hard and fast evidence of any involvement by [Michael] Brodkorb, he's known to be friends with Shawn Towle, who tweeted out the link to the Tumblr, and it fits his modus operandi.”

Good piece by Dan Egan of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on the changing Great Lakes: “Lake Michigan is no longer just a Great Lake; it is a great unknown. More ominous than the all-time low the lake touched this winter is the fact that it came after languishing for 14 years below its long-term average — another record. And when it did initially drop below that long-term average, it plunged three feet between 1998 and 1999 — yet another record for water lost from one year to the next. … Previous drops into low water, in the 1920s, '30s, '50s and '60s, were always followed by a quick and sustained rebound beyond the long-term average. Usually it happened within three or four years, though the slow but steady climb during the Dust Bowl droughts took the better part of the '30s. … This is not a story about climate change. It is a story about climate changed.”

Minnesota's human services commissioner discusses state’s error-rate in the SNAP program; state officials are confident Minnesota’s economy is on the upswing; a badstomach bug comes to Minnesota; and more.

Comments (11)

If you read Kevin Hoffman's letter in it's entirety, it is speculation piled upon speculation. A really feeble attempt to spin something out of nothing, and pretty shameful for a "news" editor.

As other commenters noted previously, unless Laura Brod was caught tweeting her photo to underage boys or had gone on record as being stridently against the practice of the taking of "boudoir photos", the mere existence of such a photo is nobody's business but her own and gratuitous speculation in the absence of actual evidence on the circumstances surrounding it is nothing more than attention-seeking grandstanding.

Now she has even resorted to defining her own behavior, "It is dismissive. It is insulting. It is minimizing. It's not validating the concerns that people have". Now we don't have to write about her anymore because she will do it for us.

...I wouldn't stop with people who "choose" to take drugs.....I'd include obese people too.........and smokers.......and people who don't wear seatbelts........or those who drive motorcycles. BUt then my tax dollars would have to be used to widen the streets to hold all the dead.